Should VR companies be responsible?

Should VR companies be responsible? - Printable Version

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Should VR companies be responsible? - Jiggly - 02-06-2022

This is a long one!

I came across this article discussing issues surrounding harassments and creepy sexual behaviour of users on VR. This occurs in all walks of life online, but as VR gives a sort of "front row seat" in the action, this can feel a lot more intimidating and disturbing, than in a third person style game or chatroom. The article goes on to share a series of different women's experiences with VR and this frankly moronic behaviour:

Bloomberg's technology columnist Parmy Olson

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"I could see straight away I was the only woman, the only female avatar. And I had these men kind of come around me and stare at me silently. Then they started taking pictures of me and giving the pictures to me and I had a moment when a guy zoomed up to me and said something. And in virtual reality, if someone is close to you, then the voice sounds like someone is literally talking into your ear. And it took me aback. I was talking to another lady and within minutes of us chatting a guy came up and started chatting to us and following us around saying inappropriate things and we had to block him. I have since heard of other women who have had similar experiences." She said while she wouldn't describe it as harassment, it was "creepy and awkward".

Nina Jane Patel

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She described how a group of male avatars "groped her" and subjected her to a stream of sexual innuendo. They photographed her and sent a message reading: "Don't pretend you didn't love it."

Again, none of this is unusual behaviour on the internet. Both females and males get torrent of gross behaviour. However, this article then goes on to discuss how Meta is trying to prevent this from happening. They implemented a new feature, Personal Boundary, which prevents users avatars from coming within a certain distance. They say the aim is "creating more personal space for people and making it easier to avoid these unwanted interactions".

There are also issues surrounding moderating these chatrooms. Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth talked about the challenges Meta faces trying to decide how best to approach this problem. Understandably, he questioned whether users would want that kind of moderation, and goes on to say the following:

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Do you really want the system or a person standing by listening in? Probably not. So I think we have a privacy trade-off - if you want to have a high degree of content, safety or what we would call integrity, well that trades off against privacy. I can give no guarantees about either the privacy, nor the integrity of that conversation.

This begs the question: Who should be responsible for resolving these issues. Should Meta be in charge of censoring usernames, creating distance between avatars, removing the bottom half of characters on avatars (harder to grope genitalia/groin regions if they aren't there) and invest in massive moderation teams and algorithms to catch hate speech? Alternatively, should it be up to the users to filter it out? AKA, allowing them to block other users so they are no longer exposed to the problems? Of course, this issue means you may be exposed to nastiness in the first place, but you would have more freedom in the platform. It is important to note, you're not forced into the VR experience, it is a choice to put the headset on. This is an issue that expands to all kinds of digital spaces, video games, online chat rooms, forums etc.

What do you guys think? Should Meta take control, or should the user be responsible for their experience on the platform?